The Hunt for KSM
The Hunt for KSM: Inside the Pursuit and Takedown of the Real 9/11 Mastermind by Terry McDermott and Josh Meyer
This courtesy review copy just arrived from Machette Book Group. The authors are investigative journalists, one of whom, Meyer, has extensive experience reporting on terrorism, while McDermott is also the author of the 9-11 highjackers book, Perfect Soldiers. Thumbing through the pages, I note the authors have little time and much contempt for the cherished DoD-State canard that the Pakistani government and the ISI are an ally of the United States, which has already given me a warm feeling.
The review copy index pages are blank, something I usually see only before a book has been finalized for mass printing. Odd.
I will be reading and reviewing this soon – Shlok advises that “it reads like a novel”
March 15th, 2012 at 11:30 am
I’m noticing a trend towards books which “Read like a novel” despite being factual accounts of events. I’ve got mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it often makes the books more readable, but it often limits how effectively the writer discusses events in context of the wider environment, as too often they limit the perspective to a small number of characters. I guess its an attempt to make the works more accessable, and certainly to that end, they are good.
March 15th, 2012 at 1:11 pm
Surely you jest, zen. I mean, come on. Stop it with the blaming the Pak military and ISI for everything. You know, some of our guys have worked with their guys and come away super impressed. It’s called the Bearden “effect.”
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Deep within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) lurks T Wing, one of the few offices inside the agency that the U.S. trusts, unearthed by our friend Eli Lake of Newsweek in a blockbuster story. Around the 10th anniversary of September 11, U.S. spies got a bead on the cellphone of al-Qaida’s operations chief in Pakistan. Pakistan’s Frontier Corps snatched him, and soon the terrorist was subjected to “intensive interrogation” at a “special detention center in Punjab province,” Lake reports. T Wing runs that center.
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http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/t-wing/
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Geez, a few Al Q head honchos found near military academies and sipping mocktails with socialites and you are read to believe anything….
March 16th, 2012 at 1:11 pm
@ zen, charles, j scott, to whomever it may concern:
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I seem to have a comment stuck in moderation or the spam filter or something. It’s not important to liberate it, necessarily, just a heads up….
March 16th, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Sorry for the delay Doc Madhu – no one minding the store yesterday 🙂
March 17th, 2012 at 2:35 am
Richard Miniter gave an hour long talk at the International Spy Museum on his book Mastermind: The Many Faces of the 9/11 Architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed that’s worth a listen.